


coda

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [11]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Ghost Sex Changes a Mech..., Innuendo, Multi, Reference to Past Use of Sex Toys, Till All Are One 11 Spoilers, reference to fisting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:53:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: When Windblade opens her eyes, she remembers everything that happened while she was dead.Giving Starscream a hard time about it is just for fun.





	coda

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [So Many Miles To Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407641) by [spockandawe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe). 



> /nudges canon around to make room for today's fresh nonsense/ This one's for u, Spock.

Starscream almost doesn't give Airachnid the go ahead to work on Windblade. 

Windblade fumes and plops herself down right on top of Starscream's desk for the rest of the day as he sulks over Bumblebee's pointed absence, so that any time Starscream wants to reach for a data pad or disparage Blast Off or take a sparing sip of energon, he's forced to deal with her seething glare as he puts a hand through her incorporeal torso. Without Bumblebee here to provide emotional ballast, Windblade can only shout so much before Starscream sniffs haughtily ignores her right back. "Wouldn't you like to be rid of me? One less  _hallucination_ , am I right?!" she demands, knowing full well that it's a low blow, but unable to stop herself from firing it off. He sneers to himself, but doesn't reply. Whether she's a hallucination or a spark ghost wandering around, somehow attached to Starscream while her processor slowly melts down under the pressure of sustaining both herself and Vigilem - this isn't  _fair._ She clenches her fists in her lap, while something inside her screams. 

Because if part of her conscious mind is present here, with Starscream, will what's left in her frame be enough to fend off Vigilem?

Judging by the reports that the medic forwards to Starscream, desperate to plead his and Windblade's case, which Starscream ignores so blatantly that Windblade easily reads test results over his arm, it isn't. She's not winning. She's not enough.

Naturally, after an entire day of wasted effort, Starscream talks himself into it late in the night as he tosses and turns alone on the empty berth. Bumblebee fades back into view once Starscream drags himself to his decision, and throws Windblade an apologetic look for vanishing on her, too. 

-

In the morning, Airachnid sends him in after her.

After a klik of anxiously hovering in between the medical berths with Starscream's unconscious frame on one side and her own (unsettling, too-still) frame on the other, Bumblebee resting a wisp-light hand on her shoulder - Windblade blacks out, and knows nothing more.

-

She wakes up to Airachnid leaning over her. The Eukarian trails her needles down Windblade's cheek in a caress before lifting them with a slow, sly smile before moving away, explaining to the medic that this will be an on-going process, that parts of Windblade's processor will still require delicate reconstruction to ensure she's stable, and that Airachnid must continue to scour her memories in order to root out every last trace of the Titan's mind. "Poor thing," Airachnid simpers, shooting that unwavering smile back at Windblade. Windblade is abruptly reminded with a cold twinge of what Starscream had her do to the Combaticons - what little Windblade picked up from context, and from Bumblebee's muttered explanation. "That must have been excruciating. But it's all over. You're in good hands, now."

And just like that, Windblade knows three things with utter certainty.

First, that she agreed to help Starscream neutralize Elita One's growing influence and hero worship on Cybertron while Starscream  _risked their lives_ instead of immediately isolating Vigilem's persona for Airachnid to pluck out of Windblade's processor. He wasted precious kliks flying around, dodging both Vigilem's barbed attacks and Windblade's frustrated attempts to strangle him for being an  _idiot_  until Windblade finally agreed to knock Elita off her pedestal and - somehow - win everyone over with her charm and charisma. On the one hand, Windblade agreed under the most ridiculous kind of duress, with both her own and Starscream's life on the line. On the other, the fact that Elita capitalized off Windblade's efforts and sacrifice, when  _she_  was the one who refused to explain why unleashing Vigilem-in-Carcer would be so dangerous, leaves Windblade feeling colder toward Elita than toward Starscream, at the moment. So she'll do it. For Cybertron's sake, if nothing else. 

And second, that she remembers quite clearly what Starscream looked like two nights ago in... _remarkably_ intimate detail. She remembers all that she learned yesterday, while observing Starscream interact with Blast Off. 

The hallucination theory can officially get slagged. Windblade gives silent thanks that Starscream would prefer to think himself stressed to the point of hallucinating - if he'd thought even for a second that Windblade might return to her body with the full memory of watching him come undone, he might have left her body to rust away for good. Starscream's sense of self-preservation may be a warped thing, driven by the sharp edge of a lifetime of paranoia and traumatic reinforcement, but now that Windblade has seen who Starscream is behind his public mask of cold scheming, she can see the cracks riddling him to the core. 

(And...and...third? What was the third thought? Windblade spent so much time mulling over the first two thoughts that she's lost the third. It lingers only like a muddled fragment of recharge feedback; she attempts to ping her memory for it, but receives nothing but the garbled outline where the thought should be. Something about Airachnid's eyes - no, her face paint - the sharp, neat curl of black under her eyes, and the way that she nipped in as easy as you please to carve Vigilem wholly out of Windblade's -)

But the thought is lost in the dull, fuzzy haze of recharge, as Airachnid adjusts the settings on Windblade's medical berth with a twitch of her slender, clever fingers, and sends her back to sleep. 

-

A face painted like Caminus's watches from the dark underside of her optics while she rests. 

But he's not really there anymore. Windblade knows what that would feel like, now. 

-

Starscream leaves before Windblade regains consciousness, and doesn't make an appearance for the next week while Airachnid finishes tweaking Windblade's circuits to encourage fresh growth and healing in the damaged sectors. Windblade never stops feeling uneasy with the mnemosurgeon, as the Eukarian hums and makes small talk about brain modules that doesn't exactly  _help_ with the uneasiness. 

It doesn't matter. By the time Starscream deigns to show his face, Windblade is well enough to sit up.

She's also well enough to stare very meaningfully at her wrist for a full five kliks, and then stare at Starscream.

(If he's going to be an aft about it, Windblade gets to have  _fun_. She nearly died. She's  _earned_ this.)

He doesn't pick up on it immediately, which just makes the whole thing funnier. Windblade can barely keep a straight face as he starts reiterating their deal, as though she's somehow forgotten everything in the past week. Every so slowly, with very deliberate, telegraphed movements, Windblade raises her hand, and then wraps her fingers around her own wrist. All the while, she meets Starscream's gaze with a dead serious expression. She cleaned off her makeup after seeing herself in the mirror, that first night, and she knows full well that it's harder to read her expression without the red paint on her mouth. It blends in with the rest of her face instead, making it more difficult to see her lips twitching with the effort it takes not to laugh.

-

The next day, Windblade walks all the way to Starscream's headquarters under her own power. She feels much stronger now that her own limbs hold up under her, now, and revels in the relief of having her mind and body to herself again. Mecha wave and call out to her in the street, more freely now than before, when she was just Windblade-the-alien, responsible for Metroplex and all of Metroplex's hiccups and setbacks as he healed over the past few years. Windblade does what she can to start making good on her promise to Starscream - which means that by the time she reaches his office, her unpainted face aches from smiling and greeting people, and she's ready to give him a hard time.

Bumblebee leans up against the wall when Windblade walks in, which...is interesting. Maybe it complicates things - or maybe it makes things easier. 

(That's a lie. Nothing to do with Starscream could ever be easy. Absolutely nothing goes smoothly when Starscream gets it in his head to make a hash of things.)

Either way, Windblade doesn't acknowledge his presence - at first. Though it's good to  _see_ him: she feels a faint pang at the thought of never being able to interact with him again, save through the mercurial medium of Starscream, and knows that she would have missed him. But smiling at a ghost would be too easy. She's going to make Starscream work for it. 

She starts things off by raising her arm, tapping her chin with a finger as she holds her wrist up to the light and inspects it with intense scrutiny, and then meets Starscream's optics.

He stares at her with just the faintest squint of incomprehension in his optics, his mouth half-open in an aborted greeting. Faint enough that Windblade can clearly see the moment Starscream attempts to wave it off as just her being odd. Windblade lowers her wrist with a shrug and strides up to the desk to handle him.

Halfway through the frustrating discussion that follows, Windblade forms her servos into a loose fist and flicks her eyes between it and Starscream. She nods, and purses her mouth when Starscream tries to pull his Ruler of Cybertron card, and very gradually takes the measurements of every angle of her forearm. 

Handle him, indeed. 

-

She caves the next day, once she's run out of both subtle and incredibly obvious ways of pretending to show off her wrist. Stark trepidation fills Starscream's face whenever she walks into the room, which is all Windblade ever wanted and more. It's  _hilarious._ He  _surely_ must have caught on by now - after she drops the word 'fisting' in the middle of a very forced argument about repairing Metroplex's hands? He'd have to be comatose  _not_ to pick up what she's laying down.

But denial is a powerful thing, and Starscream the grand champion thereof.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and she's starting to feel bad about ignoring Bumblebee; despite her quiet attempts to catch his gaze, Bumblebee's transparent ghost doesn't appear to notice. He's so used to only Starscream seeing him, Windblade thinks, that he doesn't think to check whether anyone else has noticed him. They've been like this for years - the two of them apparently caught by whatever strange twist of fate caused Bumblebee's spark ghost to fall into orbit around Starscream. 

So finally, at last, Windblade follows Starscream out into the hallway after the council meeting and sighs gustily, stretching both arms up over her helm as he shoots her a wary-eyed stare -  _look at my wrists_ , Windblade thinks, smiling internally. "So," she says, as casual as anything as she steps between Starscream and Bumblebee and keeps pace with them both. "How is Big Blue doing?" She holds up her wrist one last time. "We really  _do_ need to compare it. I think being incorporeal made my arm look thinner than it really was, and that's simply not fair."

She swallows laughter for a split second - and then the dawning look of realization and then drop-jawed  _horror_ on Starscream's face leaves her splitting at the sides, laughing so hard that her torso aches. Between fits of giggles, Windblade lifts her hand and holds it just  _so_ , right where it needs to be to look like she's touching Bumblebee's outstretched, trembling hand.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be funnier than it ended up being...
> 
> Windblade's face constantly for the entire duration of this fic:
> 
>  


End file.
